New CO Education-Related Law Adds a ‘State-of-the-Art Dashboard to a Car with Rotting Tires & an Empty Gas Tank’

This past week, Governor Polis signed House Bill 25-1278, expanding high-stakes testing and approving a new accountability dashboard from the Colorado Department of Education (CDE). Instead of innovation, Colorado’s children are stuck with more testing, growing class sizes, fewer electives, and diminishing opportunity. Despite decades of test-driven policies, the achievement gap has widened while administrative budgets have ballooned.

Data from CDE reveals a troubling reality: the number of at-risk students has more than doubled — from 163,052 in 2000 to 354,966 in 2023. Meanwhile, the number of CDE employees has grown from 395 in 2001 to 680 in 2021, and its budget has nearly tripled. Yet local school districts face funding cuts, teacher shortages, and declining student engagement. More than 100 neighborhood schools have closed in the last decade, signaling the real crisis in public education.

House Bill 1278 is like adding a state-of-the-art dashboard to a car with rotting tires and an empty gas tank, expecting it to go further and faster.

Socioeconomic status remains the strongest predictor of test scores, making the high-stakes model ineffective in closing achievement gaps. Instead, it exacerbates inequalities, disproportionately affecting low-income students while fueling privatization efforts.

High-Stakes Testing: A Tool for Profit, Not Progress

High-stakes testing is not just an educational failure — it has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. Large corporations profit immensely from state testing contracts, controlling curriculum and instructional methods despite constitutional provisions for local control. The expansion of testing mandates ensures a steady stream of revenue for testing companies, data analysts, and educational consulting firms, while diverting critical funding away from classrooms.

As testing companies reap profits, Colorado’s neighborhood schools suffer. Teachers are leaving the profession in droves, citing burnout, excessive bureaucratic oversight, and a testing culture that undermines meaningful education. Students, too, bear the brunt of these policies, forced into rigid assessment cycles that prioritize standardized answers over creativity and critical thinking.

Before the rise of high-stakes testing, schools were guided by local communities through democratic processes. School boards played a central role in shaping education to meet community needs. Today, top-down mandates sideline educators and local leadership, creating a system that serves corporate interests rather than students.

The Christian Nationalist Agenda Behind Testing and Privatization

The push for test-based accountability aligns with a broader political agenda — one that seeks to dismantle public education in favor of vouchers and charter schools. High-stakes testing has fueled efforts to discredit neighborhood schools, making way for privatization and the erosion of equitable access to education.

Christian Nationalist groups have championed these policies, using test scores as justification for expanding voucher programs that funnel public dollars into private religious institutions. These efforts weaken public education, institutionalizing the inequalities and leaving our Democracy in the hands of a less educated and disempowered citizenry.

The narrative of “failing public schools” is used as a smokescreen to promote privatized alternatives that operate with less oversight and public accountability.

Meanwhile, the corporate sector benefits from this shift. Testing regimes create lucrative contracts for private firms managing assessments, digital platforms, and curriculum development. By controlling the metrics for success, these companies position themselves as indispensable to education — despite the fact that their methods have repeatedly failed to improve student outcomes.

The Path Forward: Putting Education Back in Educators’ Hands

Standardized testing has failed an entire generation of American students. In an era of artificial intelligence and digital innovation, clinging to outdated assessment models undermines true learning. The amount of data available doubles every two years, rendering standardized test results obsolete before they are even analyzed. By the time scores appear on multi-million-dollar dashboards, students have already outgrown the data set, making the entire system worthless.

Our neighborhood schools — once the beating heart of our communities — are at a breaking point. Enrollment is down, teacher retention is at crisis levels, and schools are being forced to close. The state’s obsession with high-stakes testing has drained resources from classrooms, replacing authentic education with rigid assessment structures that serve political and corporate agendas rather than students.

To save public education, lawmakers must change course. Instead of investing taxpayer dollars in testing regimes, Colorado must prioritize student learning environments, competitive salaries for professional educators, and targeted funding towards student intervention and prevention. The authority to shape education must return to those who understand it best — teachers, school leaders, and local communities.

The future of Colorado’s schools depends not on punitive accountability but on meaningful, community-driven solutions. Only by dismantling the failed testing model and focusing on real student needs can we create schools our students deserve, and society demands.

Angela Engel is a mother, educator, and facilitator. Learn more at www.angelaengel.com